Friday, November 16, 2012
If you're traveling by car this Thanksgiving in Northern Virginia, try to drive very early in the morning.
About 43.6 million people are planning to travel 50 miles or more for their Thanksgiving meal this year, according to AAA—and 90 percent of those people are traveling by car. While Northern Virginia is traffic-heavy throughout the holiday period, the day before Thanksgiving is the heaviest travel day. To help you plan your travel, the Virginia Department of Transportation created this set of maps showing Thanksgiving traffic congestion from Wednesday, Nov. 23 through Sunday, Nov. 27, 2011. Unlike last year, the Beltway Express Lanes will be open for Thanksgiving, which may alleviate some of the Thanksgiving travel congestion on Wednesday. The 2011 maps show the heaviest travel in Northern Virginia last year, particularly around the Beltway…
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Department says new technology will allow officials to track plows, redirect them to emergencies this winter.
When Northern Virginia gets snow this winter, the Virginia Department of Transportation says it's ready to meet it head-on, with a $55 million budget and new resources, including technology that allows for more efficient plowing and an increased road-salt supply. At a briefing about the department's winter preparedness plans Wednesday in Fairfax, Branco Vlacich, VDOT’s Northern Virginia maintenance engineer, said 4,000 trucks would be available to plow snow and keep roads clear this winter — 1,000 more trucks than VDOT had during the harsh winter of 2010. About 2,200 of the 4,000 trucks will be equipped with Automatic Vehicle Locator (AVL) technology, enabling officials to locate plow trucks are and deploy them to the nearest emergency …
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Drivers lose three lanes from Friday night through Monday morning
The Virginia Department of Transportation will shut down I-66 westbound this weekend near the Capital Beltway for excavation, paving, demolition and road marking work. The work is part of the I-495 HOT LANES project. The lane closures, which run 9 p.m. Friday through 5 a.m. Monday, will be done in four phases, according to VDOT. (See provided map and text below for more information) Phase 1 Friday Night: 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. Saturday morning Saturday Night: 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. Work area: I-495 north/south, Exit 49, ramps to I-66 west reduced to one lane onto I-66 west. Also I-66 west approaching I-495 reduced to one through lanes. Phase 2 Saturday Morning 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Work area: I-495 north/south, Exit 49, ramps to I-66 west reduced to …
Friday, June 29, 2012
Work scheduled 10 p.m. Friday to 8 a.m. Saturday; fourth lane will close for 30-minute increments throughout the night
Drivers should expect delays on I-66 West near its intersection with I-495 Friday night as the Virginia Department of Transportation removes an old overhead box girder as part of the 495 HOT LANES project. Between 10 p.m. Friday and 8 a.m. Saturday, VDOT will close three lanes of I-66 west at I-495, and drivers will be limited to a single lane. After midnight, VDOT said in a release, the fourth lane will close for up to 30 minutes at a time throughout the night; from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m., there will be a one hour temporary stoppage. The exit from I-495 south to I-66 West, Exit 49, will also be closed. Crews will be directing drivers to continue to exit 52B, Little River Turnpike (Route 236) east and follow signs to I-495 north to take Exit 49A…
Thursday, June 14, 2012
You can find comprehensive travel information via VDOT's 511 service on your phone, the web and now as an app for iOS and Android devices.
Last month, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) announced that their 511 service is now available for Android phones and tablets and Apple's iPhones and iPads as a free app. The service was previously available via phone calls to the 511 number and on the web at www.511virginia.org. As we all too well know, summertime travel on Virginia roads can be unpredictable. There are of course some known knowns, to paraphrase a former Secretary of Defense, such as I-95 South will be a parking lot every Friday from 2 p.m. onward. But when you encounter stalled traffic on a late evening mid-week as you try to run errands or when you find out too late that there are going to be periodic lane closures on the beltway to accommodate …
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Motorists: Give your opinion to the agency by June 12.
- GOVERNMENT
-
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Virginia E-ZPass, the Department of Transportation program that gives automatic transponders to motorists to speed up travel at toll booths, is considering a $1 monthly fee to cover administrative and operations costs. In an e-mail to E-ZPass customers, program administrators said the number of users is expected to double over the next several years as new toll roads open. The fee will help cover administrative and operations costs. "VDOT has the utmost understanding that E-ZPass operations brings convenience and efficiency to toll operations. E-ZPass allows for electronic toll collection at Virginia toll facilities and lessens the need for manual collection," the email said. "However, there is a cost to providing the service to the …
Friday, March 30, 2012
I-495 construction is almost complete, BRAC developments underway.
Northern Virginia commuters will continue to navigate around major construction in the coming months as the Virginia Department of Transportation sticks to its aggressive completion schedule for transportation projects. Steve Titunik, VDOT's communications director, said he was proud of what VDOT and its partners had been able to accomplish and hoped that construction on the state's many projects, including express lanes on I-95 and the Capital Beltway, would stay on schedule. “Spring seems to have started early, which is great news for us,” he said. 495 Express Lanes Construction The I-495 Express Lanes, formerly known as the I-495 HOT Lanes, are about 90 percent complete and scheduled to open in late 2012, according to John Lynch, VDOT's…
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Year-long study will examine navigating the highway by public transportation, bike and roadways.
A Virginia Department of Transportation study now in the public comment phase could offer ways to make commuting along Interstate-66 more efficient. The I-66 Multimodal Study is looking at 11 mobility options — HOV lanes, bicycle and pedestrian corridor access and highway improvements among them — to move commuters along the busy stretch of road between I-495 and the Roosevelt Bridge more quickly. Kanti Srikanth, transportation planning director for VDOT, said the study is also looking at a variety of supportive multimodal improvement options like moving commuters by bicycle or mass transit, implementing transportation demand management and utilizing other roadways to alleviate congestion on the road, especially during peak hours. “The …
Monday, October 31, 2011
In their response to the first of six questions posed by Patch, the candidates for Chairman of the Board of Supervisors discuss county versus state control of area roads.
The four candidates running for chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors answered six questions by email for Patch. We will feature one question over the next six days, with the unedited answers by each of the candidates. Incumbent Democrat Sharon Bulova (website, Facebook, Twitter) Independent Christopher DeCarlo (website, YouTube) Republican Michael “Spike” Williams (website, Facebook) Independent Will Radle (Facebook, YouTube) Question #1: Should Fairfax County take local control of its roads, as some surrounding jurisdictions, or allow VDOT's continued control? Explain. Sharon Bulova The State is increasingly making overtures about turning the road system (which is now pretty much entirely a State responsibility) over to …
Friday, June 10, 2011
The third part of a continuing series of interviews with key officials.
A transportation “catastrophe” looms for Northern Virginia unless the September move of 6,400 federal workers to Alexandria’s Mark Center is delayed, according to Sean Connaughton, Virginia’s Secretary of Transportation. “This is essentially putting a cork in the main artery into Washington,” said Connaughton, who acknowledged that the Mark Center location for the Washington Headquarters Service is an issue of national security. “The Department of Defense has been smart to locate some of their facilities along major interstates – except for this one.” Base Realignment and Closure will bring an “immensely negative impact” to Northern Virginia’s roadways, said Connaughton, who spoke with Patch after a speech at Shenandoah University in …
Vincent Careatti
1:21 pm on Thursday, November 22, 2012
Question is have they been trained where to pile snow. It's really great when the snow is plowed on the limited sidewalks more ›